JAPE Judge!

Following the reveal in The Professionals 3 years ago, the detective Pikachu game has finally been revealed as Detective Pikachu ~ Birth of a New Combination~. It will be available on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in Japan on February 3rd 2016 for 1,500 yen. It'll be cheaper for 1,200 yen from January 27th 2016 to February 29th 2016. It stars a "smug, talking, loveable, detective pikachu".
Edit @ 13:37: This game requires 800MB of space (6,400 blocks) to download and is listed on the official site as "Cinematic Adventure Game", with the official Nintendo site also listing it as a puzzle solving Cinematic Adventure Game. It takes place in Rhyme City and you the human character called Tim Goodman who has come to the city for a currently unknown reason. When he meets with Pikachu, the story begins. It is a 1 Player game and has no online or communication features.

0:38: A Talking Pikachu?! In addition to forgetting this game exists I also forgot they mentioned the main character Pikachu can talk (though they also said it was blue, I guess maybe someone saw the mesh model of Pikachu and thought that was its actual color?). I do hope they explain that, like is it a case like with Meowth in the anime or is this Pikachu more than it seems (though I'm hoping for no "human turned into Pokemon" thing)?0:44: Uugh, Pikachu looks kind of doughy in some shots, like I don't think a Pikachu's mouth is meant to open hat big. I guess I could also not be used to seeing a Pokemon's mouth having realistic mouth movements... but the thing is I don't think Pikachu's face was made for that either.0:47: So it looks like when they say it's a "smug, talking, loveable, detective pikachu" they meant "smug, talking, licentious, detective pikachu". :P Well at least it shows Pikachu will have a personality.0:52: Oh, in-game graphics, at first I thought this was another augmented reality game. Okay, the human characters look a bit more "realistic" than from the main series but still cartoony. Obviously I'll have to wait and see more before making a definite decision but for right now I'm okay with it. Nothing looks wrong with them, but still Pikachu talking animation...0:54: Looks like Pikachu is able to talk with other Pokemon, so that looks like it may be a mechanic.0:56: Does Pikachu have a human female secretary? Pulling out all the detective tropes I see, as if the Sherlock hat isn't enough.1:06: You guys already have one Pikachu, did you really need the normal Pikachu?

Hmm, I'm sorting getting a Professor Layton vibe from it, though I guess that comes with the territory of it being a fantastical investigation/puzzle adventure. I don't really have anything else to say until someone translates the trailer of a English version comes out.

Junichi Masuda likes this!!

Well we all know that this game will come out, as Serebii had told us about this game slightly after XY came out. (around the same time they predicted Pokken)
I just never know why it took so long to announce, especially how it is a low budget spin off.

It just doesn't fit into the epic hype of 20th anniversary.

And it is one of those games where Pikachu gets all the spot-light.
Well, good for Pikachu fans, and they are numerous. Just that not every Pokemon fan is a Pikachu fan though.

JAPE Judge!

Well we all know that this game will come out, as Serebii had told us about this game slightly after XY came out. (around the same time they predicted Pokken)
I just never know why it took so long to announce, especially how it is a low budget spin off.

It just doesn't fit into the epic hype of 20th anniversary.

And it is one of those games where Pikachu gets all the spot-light.
Well, good for Pikachu fans, and they are numerous. Just that not every Pokemon fan is a Pikachu fan though.

Maybe other Pokemon will get spotlighted as you do cases? Sure it's the main Pokemon character but it's not the only Pokemon and looks like interacting with other Pokemon will be a mechanic so they might flesh out Pokemon you need to "talk to".

Also it doesn't have anything to do with Pikachu fans. Pikachu is the mascot, plain and simple. They could have picked another Pokemon but they chose the one most people would recognize.

The cover (or promo poster or w/e) was bothering me, but it took me a while to figure it out.
You know direct-to-dvd disney movey sequels? Yeah. I wonder if they've got the english voice actors sorted out already? Someone should PM Danny DeVito on Linkedin. He should definitely be getting in on this.

When I first heard about this WAY long ago when we all thought it was just another dropped idea, I thought it could work, maybe be a quirky detective noir like Layton or Phoenix Wright. But now that I see this...

SWEET JEEBUS THIS UNCANNY VALLEY IS DEEPER THEN THE MARIANAS TRENCH! Pikachu should NOT animate that way!

This looks like it's gonna be a bad game. No offense to GF, but I feel like they needed a game to tide us over before Z or 7th gen, and decided to just make this... monstrosity. Or they just thought it would be a great idea... for whatever reason.

This looks like it's gonna be a bad game. No offense to GF, but I feel like they needed a game to tide us over before Z or 7th gen, and decided to just make this... monstrosity. Or they just thought it would be a great idea... for whatever reason.

To it's credit, the premise can work as a quirky detective game (like the aforementioned Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton), what's holding back is those disgusting "I just vomited a bit in my mouth" visuals. While a bad premise can never make a good game, bad visuals could be fixed or changed.

Which means this baffles me double since nobody at the editing desk stopped for second to say "We really can't make this work." And I blame all of it on the sacrifices made to give Pikachu a human mouth. You see, Pikachu's design just doesn't work with it. It's given mouth is small and triangular (and it doesn't help that the eyes are black and lack expression):

Which is great for looking cute, but fails to give the complex and nuanced movements of human speech. So changing it to conform looks terrible (you can already see that the top "w" lip was dropped, and the eyes were shaded up to a yellow/amber hue). Contrast Mewoth's design which has a gigantic mouth and very expressive eyes, giving the animators way more wiggle room to make it look natural, or at least visually pleasing.

Unforgettable

This looks like it's gonna be a bad game. No offense to GF, but I feel like they needed a game to tide us over before Z or 7th gen, and decided to just make this... monstrosity. Or they just thought it would be a great idea... for whatever reason.

Well, I guess all we can do is hope that the visuals are the only problem with the game. I think they should have just had a Meowth cameo and had him be a translator for Pikachu, or have the trainer be the detective and his sidekick a Pikachu. As long as the game is legitimately good, I might buy it though.

Edit: We should make a poll on who should voice Pikachu for the English dub. I say Benedict Cumberbatch or some kind of deep or philosophical sounding person. Though, chances are they'll give him a cute but serious voice ike in the anime when he's angry and stuff.

Well, I guess all we can do is hope that the visuals are the only problem with the game. I think they should have just had a Meowth cameo and had him be a translator for Pikachu, or have the trainer be the detective and his sidekick a Pikachu. As long as the game is legitimately good, I might buy it though.

Edit: We should make a poll on who should voice Pikachu for the English dub. I say Benedict Cumberbatch or some kind of deep or philosophical sounding person. Though, chances are they'll give him a cute but serious voice ike in the anime when he's angry and stuff.

I'd love for the Danny DeVito style of super grating and obnoxious style of talking. It would 100% make this game more hilarious than it already is. I have to admit I thought it was going to be another vaporware but I guess, at least in Japan, it won't be.